Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Work week 2017 Italy

A few weeks ago we headed down to Italy for another great work week. We promised you some pictures and a short report. By the way, it was the fourth time we organized a work week in beautiful Tuscany

With much enthusiasm and zeal we chopped, saw, split and piled up a huge amount of wood. Twice as much as  last year, Henk Swijnenburg claimed ... :)

In doing this, we are helping Maria Meier who runs the therapeutic community Comunita Brezzano.

This year we came with eight people, six from the Netherlands and two from Slovenia: Ervin and Andreas. These two men have a lot of experience in cutting trees through their work for Teen Challenge in Slovenia, so we were very happy with such extra manpower.

The temperature was around 35°C, so the Italians thought we were crazy for working that hard in the summer heat ... but we had planned to fill the basements with firewood for the winter!

The best thing is to see how quick we learn to work as a team and how a relationship develops between people who do not even know each other. The theme for the week was 'living victoriously'. We talked about it every night, read the Bible and shared experiences.

Of course we also went to the beach for a relaxing day. Wow, such temperatures :)

We can look back at a beautiful week in which we learned a lot from each other and certainly from God Himself, who gave us the words to pray for one another through the Holy Spirit.

Thank you very much to Adrie, Andreas, Anja, Ervin, Henk, Jan, Marc and Marja, for your hard work and servanthood. It was really nice to spend this week together. Who knows, there will be another chance next year!

We enjoy hard work as well as fundraising for the various projects. By the way, it was good to see the professional job they did on the repairs of Casa Nuova, we donated for that project last year.

Thanks also to Adrie Swijnenburg for the pictures (click to enlarge).

Gifts for our current projects are always welcome at IBAN: NL91RABO0118582275 BIC: RABONL2U St. Traveling Light in Papendrecht. 

Project Teen Challenge, Armenia
Project Brian Slater, Israel

PS: Last week we were in Romania, a very special visit! More about that soon.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Project work of Brian Slater in Israel

Brian Slater
Those who have been following our blogs for a while, know that we visit Brian Slater in Netanya, Israel almost every year. He is the founder of Abundant Bread of Salvation, an organization that offers help to Holocaust survivors, the poor and the elderly and also to new immigrants and single mothers.

Brian runs a food bank, clothing distribution and soup kitchen in Netanya and whenever we are in Israel, we enjoy volunteering with him. It is always a great opportunity to chat with the people who come for help (in German, English, Hebrews and Yiddish with many gestures of course). Volunteers come from all over the world.
Brian with Nachum (in the middle)

He is currently in the USA for a series of speaking engagements and presentations. The special thing about this trip is that he is traveling together with Nachum Kerpilevich, leader of the Association of Concentration Camps and Ghetto Survivors of Israel, Netanya Branch. This man is 84 years old and it is his first trip to America.

Brian had asked us some time ago if we wanted to help cover the costs for this trip. There is a lot of things to organize and take care of when traveling for two weeks in the USA. Meanwhile, the work in Netanya continues.

Location of food bank / soup kitchen in Netanya
If you want to know more about Brian's work in Netanya, it is really worth checking out his blog or Facebook page!

Of course we want to support Brian, his work in Israel and the trip in the USA. The proceeds of our 2nd hand shop Twinkeltje over September will all go towards this project. During our special Israel night on September 30th, we will also project pictures of Brian's work in Netanya.

If you want to help us with this, please send your gift to IBAN: NL91RABO0118582275 BIC: RABONL2U St. Traveling Light in Papendrecht. Make sure to mention ISRAEL.


PS: For our current project Teen Challenge Armenia we have already received over 3,000 euro! Gifts are still welcome.

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Celebrating 1 year anniversary Twinkeltje

Jan, Marja, Cora and Krijn
This month it is a year ago that Twinkeltje opened her doors in the Korenbloemstraat 20, Papendrecht. For those who don't know yet: this cozy shop with great second hand items is an initiative of Cora Donk, board member of Traveling Light.

The shop has become quite popular in Papendrecht and surrounding areas and a growing group of visitors enjoys a not-so-every-day shopping experience and a good cup of coffee every week. Twinkeltje is much more than just a store with 2nd hand stuff, it's a place where people come together, kind of a neighborhood shop / coffee house.

Every month the proceeds from the sales and workshops fully benefit a particular project supported by Traveling Light. These projects are mostly related to the care for the homeless, the poor, the addicts, the prostitutes and the hopeless. Cora says: "Isn't it great that we can help people who are in such difficult circumstances and at the same time have fun doing that together?"

During the previous year Twinkeltje was able to contribute an average of thousand euro each month (!) to various projects all across Europe and the Mediterranean. That is a wonderful result and a reason to celebrate our first anniversary with a Taste of Europe. In September every Saturday we will highlight another country, so come on in and taste food as well as atmosphere between 12:00 and 17:00 hrs.

We will finish the month on Saturday September 30th with a special Israel night and you are all very welcome to join us. There will be plenty of products from Israel, so come shopping! We will also make sure there will be tasty snacks, drinks, Arabic coffee, music and a slide show.
This night will be a nice opportunity to catch up, meet people and shop, all in one!

So mark your calendar!

We have just returned from a very productive (and warm) work week in Tuscany, more about that (and pictures of course) soon on this blog. For our current project Teen Challenge Armenia more than 2,000 euro has come in already, so that's going well. Thank you for all the gifts.

Gifts for this project are very welcome at IBAN: NL91RABO0118582275 BIC: RABONL2U St. Traveling Light in Papendrecht. Make sure to mention ARMENIA.

When in the USA, you can make your tax-deductible gift payable to EEO Inc. Make sure to mention: TC ARMENIA.